Impressum

Month: January 2016

So, as we wrote earlier, Kevaver will be joined by his friends, a concept custom party designed for Path of the Damned (which will hopefully fare well, as this is a mostly blind Playthrough).

And to create the “basic” group, we chose two of his friends to join him early. Adonan, a tough Aumaua Fighter and Quoril Yogsword, a Pale Elf Priest of Magran.

So first, Adonan:

Race: Aumaua – Many enemies in the frontline have stun or knockdown abilities. The Coastal Aumaua ability (resistant to these abilities) is excellent against that! This enables him to better control the combat himself (and to take fewer hits of course).

Might 13
We want some Might, but he’s not a damage dealer, so we won’t spend too much on it. 13 is a pretty OK value getting a nice Fort save as well.

Constitution 18 (+1 = 19, from Rauatai)
He’s a tank. He has to have many hitpoints. And Fortitude save is the most important save for tanks too, they can take the Reflex save based Area Damage no Problem. But failing your Fortitude save will bring you in trouble as many melee opponents have abilities just against that save.

Dexterity 12
Dexterity isn’t crucial for a good tank, but it’s just so good generally. We just have to take it to bring down cooldowns and recovery times a bit.

Perception 13
On Hard we would dump this stat, as we wouldn’t have a problem hitting enemies anyways. On Path of the Damned, if your Perception is too low, you will have problems with anything combat related (if you’re not only buffing / healing). So, a compromise.

Intellect 3
The only ability we can afford to dump. It’s not crucial for a tank even though it wouldn’t hurt either. But many effects and abilities of the tank are instant and have to do with doing engage / disengages. Intellect won’t help there much. We are bleeding on the defensive Auras though, but sometimes, we have to make sacrifices for a gain elsewhere.

Resolve 18
We are playing a tank. He should have good deflection. This helps. It’s rather useless for a non-tank though.

Second, Quoril Yogsword

Race: Pale Elf. He is more resistant to elemental damage now which can be a problem even in the back row (think Fireballs or spells in general). This will help him, as he has that super low Constitution…

Might 18
We want our spells and abilites to be as strong as possible. We want to do damage too, if using weapons. This is giving us the power. What we sacrifice is..

Constitution 3
Our priest is mainly a buff / debuff character with ranged attacks. So we don’t ever want him to be under attack. He’d be dead then with Con 10 as well, so no point in going for more than the minimum. We’ll have to be careful with him though, as there are many archers and other ranged opponents in Pillars of Eternity.

Dexterity 19
Now how great is quick spellcasting, quick attacks and quick recovery time? Speed has, in most RPGs, been a crucial ability for spellcasters and, of course, healers. Pillars is no exception.

Perception 9 (10 with The White that Wends)
Not that good but not too bad either. We want to be able to hit things when debuffed. Or we want to debuff them. Buffs are more important still, but we won’t cripple our Perception totally. That would be neither helpful nor needed.

Intelligence 18
Just nice to have. A good area for the area spells and longer lasting buffs. Maxing that is mandatory.

Resolve 10
We won’t dump that as for a healer, some help with concentration can be crucial. But we won’t boost it too. As it’s really a tank stat.

We had started a PoE Playthrough, but it was on Hard. And “Hard” was just too easy. So, we’re starting on Path of the Damned now. With a main character that should be effective, and interesting to play from a tactical and a roleplaying point of view! With a view to playing even to the second part of the White March Expansion 🙂
The first Episode is currently being rendered and we’re uploading it today on the Thoughtful Gaming Youtube Channel.

Creating a Character optimized for Combat and Exploration

So, I was thinking about a Rogue – an intriguing character with the bonus to give us a good start as well – as we won’t miss a chest with such a master in mechanics. We do want a Death Godlike, for the damage bonus on enemies on their last 25% endurance. That’s when, in my experience, most enemies will trigger special abilities too, and that’s also a critical time to do damage, for example to stop that last heal the opponent is casting and to kill him right then!

So, Death Godlike Rogue it is. What about our attributes?

Might 13
That is not too shabby here, even though the interface wants us to bring this up further. But I’d rather have the flexibility of Dexterity for massive cooldown reduction or the precision of Perception which we will need on the highest difficulty just to be able to hit things reliably.

Constitution 10
We don’t want that too high, as we won’t be a tank, but being a melee character, we cannot afford to dump this stat.

Dexterity 19 (20 with Deathfire Archipelago)
To preserve our flexibility and to give us the best opportunities. Dex is so good because it raises damage by attack speed, and it also reduces any cooldown, so it’s also great for abilities, or even reloading times. Just a great stat, even more so for ranged characters, but also for us and for some synergy with Perception and its interrupt bonus.

Perception 18
We want to be able to hit things reliably on Path of the Damned difficulty. We are fighting with two weapons, delivering great damage by that (also from the enchantments) and we want them to hit as often as possible. And interruption is a great ability for a second row melee character like a rogue. We want to be able to stop things. Now we can.

Intelligence 14
We have good abilities and want to improve them a bit. Intelligence 14 is good enough for that. We’re getting attack bonuses from our abilities, so this will improve our damage more than more Points in Might. Or so we hope.

Resolve 3
Well, we just have to dump one stat. We won’t play a tank, so we’re going to suffer against melee heavy opponents attacking us, but we will use our abilities to pummel their damage, so we won’t need too much Resolve. The will save is a pity, but no risk, no reward. And we want that reward from offensive attribute points!

We want the Blinding as our first ability as I think it’s extremely powerful, and is based on the Reflex save as well, instead of the Fortitude save, so we have a chance to blind even strong melee attackers (which usually have high Fort / lower Reflex save). It’s a protection against the hardest opponents for Kevaver, really. Making them slower won’t help there as we don’t want to be a ranged attacker and don’t want to kite.

And we want him to be from the Deadfire Archipelago, for Dexterity +1, and Roleplaying fun (a seafarer seems to be always an entertaining backstory).

Roleplaying Aspects (how will we play our Rogue in the story of Pillars of Eternity)

The old Wizards of the Coast name generator gave him the name Kevaver Forgedawn. And I’m going to go with that. It’s an elven oriented name and has a nice, gothic touch to it. I’m sure there are better names though, but also many worse.

Kevaver’s alignment, in a Dungeons and Dragons sense, should be somewhere around Chaotic Neutral, with a tendency to good. He’s got a weak spot for people sharing his fate a bit, outcasts of society. He had to endure quite a bit because of his appalling looks when he was young and, reacting to discrimination, has had his share of mainstream racism and disadvantages by local authorities. He despises authority and has a secret love for anarchy. He’s a Drifter (+1 Mechanics, +1 Stealth) which also helps him as a group utility character.

He’s a bit of a romantic, and gothic Anti-Hero, though not so much as to reduce his effectiveness much. He has acquired a circle of friends, the only ones he believes he can trust, and wants to pay for their travelling to him to help him on the adventure. (We want to create a custom group, as there are enough playthroughs with the characters from the developers.) So stay tuned for other interesting characters we will create (or, in character, re-acquire). We want a bit of freshness too, and we have quite a nice bunch of fellows prepared for the adventure.

What we still need though is a name for our group of adventurers. Are they the “Renegades of Punk”? The “Masterminds of Madness”? Even the “Freedom Fighters and Friends”? What would you call them?